I had a really hard start this morning. I’m not entirely sure where it’s coming from and I’m not sure it matters.
I started reading Alan Watts “This is It” last night, a collection of some of his early essays on Zen written between 1958 and 1960. Imagine the context.
The first essay talks about those numinous moments of clarity that happen so rarely where one perceives the wholeness of things and the rightness of it all.
As an aside, I’m jealous that the experiences he describes lasted for days while mine rarely last more than a couple of hours. I console myself with the fact that my mini-glimpses seem to happen with some regularity.
Anyway, he points out how we often get attached to the feelings of peace and euphoria that accompany these moments. We fret that we’ve lost the feeling and spend our energy trying to recreate those blissed out moments or condemn the ordinary moments as somehow being a failure. But the feelings aren’t the point. They will always fade, but the understanding can remain.
The understanding that is so clear in the moment is that all things are just as they are supposed to be. Even when things are hard. Even when there’s pain and loss and disappointment, there is something “right” about it. Even when we’ve lost the blissed out feeling, it’s still true.
He makes the argument that faith is maintaining the certainty that there is a rightness to how things are, even when the feeling fades. It’s about trusting that the experience we had was true insight.
This kind of faith enables a form of spontaneous action. There is a freedom in knowing that there is no way to get this wrong. There is no way to fail.
Doubt, on the other hand, stifles action. “But what if I’m wrong” causes paralysis and complete doubt is completely debilitating.
But complete faith is also problematic. It can lead to a sort of unfocused dissipation of energy. “If I can’t get this wrong, let’s burn shit!”
A faith in “everything is right as it is” includes the rightness of doubt.
There is a strong somatic aspect to Watt’s argument that seems to anticipate the Master and His Emissary. Actual physical reality is untidy and orderliness is only something imposed on it by the ego (i.e. left hemisphere). There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with it, but it is partial and incomplete. Not fully true. The tao that can be named is not the true Tao.
So, everything is as it should be *including* the feeling that it shouldn’t be like this.
It’s right and proper for the bird to think the purpose of the worm is as a sacrifice to the benefit of the bird, but it is also right and proper for the worm to think the bird should fuck off and leave the worm in peace. And the whole system would collapse in a single generation if the worms started to think their purpose was to surrender to the birds. Ultimately, that’s no good for the birds either.
Anyway, the take away is that we need both faith and doubt, but not in equal measure. We always need a preponderance of faith with a sprinkling of doubt.
Ultimately, faith is simply trust in the genius of one’s organism - our ability to sense and feel and respond and interact in the blooming buzzing confusion of reality.
So, how do we bring experience and expectation into alignment? How do we align ourselves with the Tao - with reality as it emerges and evolves?
It confirms the Navigation via Tension idea. Tensions are merely an indicator of the gap between reality as it is and our innate sense of how it could be. As such, it is ripe for learning.
Both / and, not either / or. Everything can be a tool or a weapon. How do we enable future action informed by past experience?
The greatest sin (error, missing the mark) is ignoring feedback - Einsteinian insanity. The left hemisphere shouting down the right.
So, what’s the so what?
The paramitas are basically “fake it ‘til you make it.” They are a sort of embodied manifestation of faith in the rightness of things - including my feelings that things aren’t right at all.
So, the goal is to make choices that make sense in the playful world of spirit coming to know itself, even when it feels like this world is fucked.
Somehow, it feels like there is strong affinity between “more faith than doubt” and focusing on the best next experiment. You already know what you need to know and have all you need to do the best next step. Do that, let go of outcomes and reassess based on feedback.
That’s the best you can do. Let that free you to do it.